Feb. 26 -A nonprofit organization formed to create a local black cable television network said Friday it will launch its channel, Colours - Television for All People, March 24 at 6 p.m. on AT&T Channel 55.

Black Star Communications was established to take advantage of a provision in Denver's cable-franchise agreement - first made with the old Tele-Communications Inc. - that requires TCI's successor, AT&T, to provide channel space for locally produced African-American programming.

Colours, however, will feature multicultural, multiethnic programming, said its new General Manager Tracy Jenkins.

AT&T grant helps creation

Nonprofit Denver Community Television has been using Channel 55, but will turn over the channel to Colours, said Jenkins. It will continue to broadcast on other channel space.

Jenkins and Celeste Durant, director of programming for the new station, have been using part of a $500,000 grant from AT&T to create programming for the new channel, which will begin broadcasting a six-hour block of movies, independently produced documentaries and its own productions when it goes up on cable next month.

The specific time of the programming block, which probably will be be offered sometime from mid-afternoon to early evening, has not been decided, Jenkins said.

Infomercials, home shopping

But the other 18 hours of the station's 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operations will be taken up by "revenue generating" infomercials and home shopping, Jenkins said.

The six-hour block, to be commercialfree like public television, will be broken up by mini-biographies of local people from all cultures who have inspired others, Jenkins said.

Besides those one-minute to two-minute biographies, local programming will consist of four original productions that are being made with freelance crews at a variety of production facilities.

The half-hour programs will include "Primary Colours," an issues-oriented show Jenkins described as a mix between Oprah Winfrey and "Meet the Press"; "It Takes a Village ...," which will focus on available community resources; "The Scene," a music and entertainment show; and "Being Well,"
a Martha Stewart-style discussion of health issues affecting minorities.

Black Star Communications will make a formal announcement of the launch of the network at the Five Points Media Center, 2900 Welton St., on Tuesday.

The group recently named its board of directors, and one board member, Rosalind "Bee" Harris, publisher of Urban Spectrum, a community newspaper, said people have been calling her ever since then to volunteer to work with the station.

Planning for the network has been going on for almost 20 years, Harris said, but the organization of Black Star didn't start taking shape until last summer.

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